RE:Birth by Sleep
by Akatsuki Leader13
Summary: Sequel to First Steps, A Thousand Miiles. It was the day that changed everything, the day one of them was elevated to Master and a new enemy appeared. It would begin with joy but end in tears.


Yo everybody! You reached my goal so I'm posting more. Now I'm not going to post anymore until I get a bit of a backlog of finished chapters so you'll have to wait a few months before more comes out. I will try for November but no promises.

Anyway enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach or Kingdom Hearts.

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"So that's a Keyblade," Ichigo Kurosaki commented, studying the weapon held up by his friend.

Keigo smiled back with that same goofy, excited grin of his. "Yeah. It's called Heroic Truth."

True to the weapon's name it resembled a fusion of a sword and a key. It looked a little silly to be honest then again it was this Keyblade that freed him from Quilge's prison so he couldn't really complain too much. And from the sounds of it they provided an array of powers to the wielder not entirely unlike a zanpakutō. Though its name was loud, obvious and stupid but somehow it seemed to suit Keigo.

Ichigo's eyes darted from the weapon to its wielder. It many ways Keigo hadn't changed much. Sure he gained a few inches, grew his hair out a bit and even lost the roundness of his face, making him look older and… well he would say 'mature' but it was still Keigo so that wouldn't fit. The scar that marred his face stood out, a vertical line running from his forehead down across the bridge of his nose. His body from the neck down was covered in armor like the others, an armor the likes of he had never seen before. The armor plates were sleek and thin yet looked strong and resilient, underneath them a skintight scaled suit. Its plates were colored a light blue and silver while the scaled suit was a darker blue. Embedded within the shoulders' of the armor were round, pale blue crystals. Resting next to Keigo was a matching blue and silver helmet, its featureless face stretching out into what roughly resembled a curved beak. A pair of horns shot out of the back of the helmet in the shape of the outline of bird wings. Yet remove the armor and he would have looked like just another high school teenager.

However that was just at first glance. Looking at him, _really_ looking at him Ichigo could see the changes etched into his friend. The scar on his face was obvious but that wasn't all. There was something else different with Keigo, something Ichigo couldn't quite name but he could see it in his eyes. It wasn't just the strength he had gained.

"And it's used to battle 'Heartless'?" Ichigo continued, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Among other things," Keigo replied, dismissing the weapon in a flash of light.

"They sound a little like hollows," the substitute shinigami mused, leaning back a little on boulder he was sitting on.

Hollows, souls that had lost their hearts becoming twisted, the Heartless, monsters born out of the darkness of people's hearts. Both were driven by instinct and desired nothing more than to consume people. And both were about as pleasant as they sounded. Was there a connection between them?

Keigo gave him a blank look for a moment before his expression changed, realization dawning on him. "Oh those things… I had forgotten about them," he admitted, rubbing the back of his head. "Yeah those don't seem to exist in other worlds."

Now it was Ichigo's turn give a dumbfounded look. No hollows? Did that mean that all souls automatically crossed over upon death? Or was their system of life and death just different? And would happen if they died on another world? Not that he was thinking about them dying, it was just…well strange. Not the concept of other worlds, he had been on two different worlds already and like most people on Earth he knew that there were countless planets orbiting countless stars in the galaxy. But that these worlds had their own laws of life and death, different from theirs was weird. "They don't?"

"Yep. Same with the shinigami," his friend answered. "You guys are pretty unique here."

"Really?"

Keigo shrugged his shoulders. "Different worlds, different rules, different passage of time, different…well a lot of things. It's best not to think too much about it and just go with it. It'll make things a lot easier to handle. Heck, Mizuiro got to go to a video game world, twice."

"The Grid isn't a video game world," the shorter teen dismissively replied. "It simply a world made up entirely of software and data. It really isn't all that different from this place."

No, it was strange. The Soul Society made sense, it was the Afterlife. But this 'Grid' sounded just bizarre. How would a world of software and data come into existence? Data was artificial, someone had to create it so who did and why? And for that matter how could it exist in universe as something physical?

"You guys are getting off track here," Tatasuki said, interrupting any further conversation. "We could spend hours explaining everything we about the universe and all the worlds we've been too. Let's keep it simple for him."

Mizuiro had straightened out the ends of his hair, growing them passed his ears thought that stray lock between his eyes were still there. And despite looking older like the rest he looked younger, retaining his almost boyish appearance. Yet he was different as well. He seemed… livelier, happier, for the lack of a better than he had ever seen him before. His armor was a pale yellow trimmed with brass, giving it an almost golden appearance while the suit underneath the plates was dark gray. Inserted into the shoulder pads were yellow crystals.

Out of all of them Tatsuki seemed to have changed the least. She had aged a few years like the rest of them and grown her hair out long, tying it back in a topknot. Her features had softened a bit, becoming more womanly but even then Tatsuki looked just as tough and tomboyish as she always did. Like the others she was in armor, dark purple and gold over black, identical purple stones within her shoulders.

"There are a lot of strange things out there," his oldest friend commented, lazily sitting against a still standing part of a wall. "After a while you get use to it."

Keigo nodded his head, continuing the story, "So after our first encounter with the Heartless in the Keyblade Graveyard the Caretaker helped get us to a safer place-"

"If you're going to tell him what happened than it needs to be done right," a voice called out, drawing everyone's attention.

It was Chizuru, breathing out purple smoke as she approached them. In contrast to the others she was different, her appearance, her attitude, her demeanor, everything about her seemed to have changed. Then again it wasn't like he actually really knew her. At best she was the friend of a friend to him. In fact he wasn't even sure if he had ever said more than two words to her. She had aged just like everyone else but that was perhaps the smallest of her changes. Her hair was a little longer than he remembered but it was straight and flat, hanging lifelessly and carelessly from her scalp. Then there was the eyepatch covering her left eye, the end of a thin scar poking out from under it. Her right eye was the same, sitting behind the lens of her red framed glasses or rather half of her glasses, the left half had been removed altogether. The formfitting armor she wore was bright red and trimmed with gold over black.

There was something about Chizuru that unsettled him now. Maybe it was the angry, bitter way she carried herself, the hard edge to her voice, the haunted look in her eye or that she only had one eye. A part of him wondered what could have caused such a change in her while another felt there were some things better left unknown. And it wasn't entirely lost on him that the others seemed to be concerned and wary of her as well.

"Then put that out," Keigo replied, waving a hand in front of his face. "I don't want to smell your smoke the whole time I'm telling the story."

Ichigo had to agree. The smoke had a strong, bitter stink to it that irritated his nose. But Chizuru shook her head before bringing the pipe back to her lips. "This is Radiant Garden Purple Leaf, from before it fell. You know how much this cost me?" she said, pipe bobbing as she spoke. "I'm not going to waste this."

"You know Radiant Garden is back right?"

"Of course I do. But much of its native flora and fauna are now extinct, including the Purple Leaf," the red head answered, sitting down on another piece of debris. "So I'm going to take my time and enjoy every last little bit of it."

Keigo groaned, putting a hand on the bridge of his nose. "Just put it out before I start choking on your smoke."

But she didn't. She didn't even react to his words, breathing out another puff.

"Come on! I'm a Master so you have to listen to me!" the brown haired young man exclaimed, waving his hands in the air for effect.

For a moment the girl stared at him, her cheeks moving back and forth like she was chewing on something. She pulled out her pipe and opened her mouth, breathing out a ring of smoke before returning it to her lips. The smoke drifted lazily towards Keigo's face who swatted it away in disgust. "I swear if I get lung cancer because of you I'll-"

"Beat me up? In your dreams Asano," Chizuru replied, smirking. "We all know you're as good at fighting women as you are at wooing them."

"That's not true!" Keigo angrily shot back.

"One woman, one time is just an anomaly," the girl dismissed.

"She's got you there Mister Asano," Mizuiro casually commented. "Your track record with women, on both accounts is rather abysmal."

Keigo turned to his shorter friend, an exaggerated look of shock and betrayal etched on his face. "Et tu Mizuiro?" he uttered.

Ichigo couldn't help but chuckle at his friend's antics, instantly feeling better than he had moments before. And he wasn't the only one, everyone else was grinning too. It had been so long that Keigo didn't seem all that annoying anymore.

"Continue _Mister_ Asano," an amused Chizuru said. "Or would you like me to tell it? I might even include _that_ story. You know the one where you ended running back to the castle-"

"No! No!" the young man squeaked, flushing red with embarrassment. "I'll tell it!" Keigo cleared his throat and continued. "Anyway the Caretaker's crystal had taken us to the Land of Departure, home of Keyblade wielders like ourselves." He stopped, hesitating for a second. "At least it was. It's gone now, destroyed by-"

"You're skipping ahead," Tatsuki interrupted. "Stick to the beginning."

Keigo nodded his head. "Right, right… Anyway the people there took us in and recruited us into their order-"

"Recruited? Hmph. We never had a choice," Chizuru murmured, a dry, bitter edge to her voice.

The brunette loudly cleared his throat, trying to regain control of the conversation. "_Anyway _they taught us how to use our Keyblades and all the powers that go along with it. The training was grueling and at times painfully dull. It was just like being back at school but without the fun stuff like pretty girls in short skirts—Oww!"

Tatsuki pulled her armored fist back from the top of Keigo's head, glaring at him as he rubbed his head. "Come on! I was telling the story!" he exclaimed.

Her arm shot up again, ready to strike. The message was clear. Keigo gulped but resumed the story. "So anyway after about two, two and year years of training Tatsuki and I were selected by our Master, Fa Ming-Na, to take the Mark of Mastery Exam, the final exam you could say."

Keigo paused for a moment. He leaned forward, intertwining his fingers together on his lap, a funny look in his eyes that Ichigo just couldn't place. "And that's when everything changed…"


End file.
